


i'm the damn fool that shot him

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 05:25:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11006901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: A halfway-meta character study of the narrator.





	i'm the damn fool that shot him

Burr feels doubled over on himself, looks down and expects to see two shadows, looks in the mirror and wonders at the faint double vision that his glasses don't quite fix.

He knows, sometimes. Nothing else, just knows. When Alexander Hamilton claps him on the shoulder in the middle of a crowded bar in 1776, a flash of a melody catches in the back of his throat.

_i'm the damn fool that shot him_

He knows Alexander is an orphan before either of them say a word, knows it from the moment they make contact, and at the same time he doesn't know at all.

He's Aaron Burr. That's all he is. Except he's also the narrator of someone else's story, the damn fool that shoots Alexander Hamilton.

He wakes up in the middle of the night, Theodosia tucked against his side. There's a melody in his throat again, bitter like medicine powder.

_how does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore_

And right after that, the same name, with the same beat to it, the same melody.

_Alexander Hamilton_

"Wait!" they speak and sing in tandem, meaning different things. Burr's waiting, Hamilton refuses to.

 

He meets Angelica Schuyler. She's a married woman in one blink, pining after Hamilton in the next (who isn't, with his pretty eyes that might be blue-violet and might be brown, his hair pulled back in a bright red or dark-brown-almost-black ponytail) and Schuyler becomes Church every second or third thought.

Magarita Schuyler introduces herself as Peggy, but the memory, and the name with it, warps whenever he thinks about it. There's something faint about her, like she might just fade from the world, or from the story, at any moment.

 

Burr looks in the mirror and sees a Negro man in one blink and the face he thinks is his own in the next. The Negro is good-looking, Burr thinks. Maybe that's what the narrator looks like, whenever this damn story gets told.

 

He's lying half-dead of heatstroke in a hospital cot when he hears the shouting, and the narrator stands, pulling him up with him, and everything blurs into two realities. In one, he lies there, half-conscious, while John Laurens shoots Charles Lee in the side while Alexander Hamilton watches with a terrifying joy. In the other, he catches Lee as he reels and cries out, half-carries, half-drags him to the medical tent (where he, the real him, not the goddamned narrator is still lying)

Either way it plays out, he hears the gunshot.

Both he and Hamilton go home. He leaves to recover from the heatstroke, Hamilton to tend to his pregnant wife.

 

They work together, and the ponytail that Burr grabs to drag Hamilton back into his seat is sometimes red and sometimes black, and the hand that holds it is sometimes white and sometimes brown.

Aaron Burr just sighs as Hamilton works himself to death's door. The narrator brings a melody with him.

_Why do you write like you're running out of time?_

Aaron Burr calls Hamilton "Alexander"

The narrator calls him "bastard-orphan-sonofawhore" and Burr curls into the space where Theodosia the elder used to sleep and laughs so he doesn't cry.

 

One summer, he doesn't remember the year, (they stop making sense the further they go) he wakes up with a melody, like a note from some higher power, parchment-dry in his throat.

_I'll let him tell it_

Alexander Hamilton makes a choice that ruins his life. Burr doesn't know it, but the narrator does.

 

Later, the year hazier still, Hamilton finishes the job. He always did talk too much, and now it's come back to bite him. Burr helps Thomas Jefferson and James Madison bring him down. The narrator shifts uncomfortably, says nothing.

 

Hamilton sings: "I couldn't seem to die"

Burr isn't there.

The narrator sings: "Wait for it, wait for it"

 

Reality splinters apart. Burr doubles over, and the narrator clutches his (their?) his head, as everything diverges and overlaps and cracks.

It's 1800. Burr is campaigning for the presidency. Talks less, smiles more.

_Shake hands with him, charm her!_

At the same time it's 1801, the Hamiltons have moved uptown, mourning for their son. Magarita Schuyler died in March. Peggy was long gone already. The narrator finds this a little unfair. Burr says nothing.

Burr loses. It's Hamilton's fault.

 

There are letters written. The narrator sings when Burr signs them. He sounds sad.

 

Reality comes apart again. Burr screams, and for once he's thankful that his daughter isn't there. The narrator makes a sound that's more like a sob.

It's 1800, maybe 1801. Hamilton costs Burr the presidency. Anger turns to rage, the narrator seems to hate Burr and Hamilton equally.

It's 1804, Hamilton makes sure Burr loses the race for governor. This is what brings him to violence.

 

The whole world shatters at the gunshot.

 

Regret and apathy wash over him in conflicting waves. He gets a drink. A melody rises, like bile.

_The world was wide enough for both Hamilton and me..._

Burr knows, somehow, deeper than the narrator's knowledge, right down in his gut, that they would have ended up killing each other, no matter what happened,  no matter how long they stalled.

 

The narrator is gone. Burr knows nothing of the future.

He dies not knowing that Eliza has taken the mantle from him, that she tells the story, that she has a narrator singing what is and what will be.


End file.
